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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

RoboEatz

Video: A Look at The RoboEatz Robotic Kitchen

In the world of food robots, there’s a trend towards building what are, in essence, stand-alone restaurants in a box.

These independent robotic kiosks enable operators to offer food and generate revenue from pretty much anywhere: airports, universities, condos. For the consumer, they’re great because it allows you to buy a warm meal without having to sit down at a restaurant.

Many of these self-contained food-making robots specialize in a type of food or are limited in what exactly they can do. The RoboEatz Ark 03, however, stands out because it can do almost everything: food prep, make hot or cold meals, plating the meal, cook four meals simultaneously. It even cleans up when it’s done.

“It’s almost like a dark kitchen,” Alex Barseghian, CEO of RobEatz, tells the Spoon. “You can cook bowls, salads, pasta all in one shot.”

Recently, The Spoon’s Carlos Rodela caught up with Barseghian to check in on the company’s progress and see the Ark 03 in action. During the interview, Barseghian tells Carlos all the details about the robot kitcen, including how many meals it can make, how many ingredients it holds, and when it expects to deploy the Ark 03 to a second location.

You can hear all of that and more by watching the full interview below:

A Look at The RoboEatz Food Robot With The Spoon

When You Think About Food Robots, Consider the Remote Mining Facility

Whenever I talk with a food robot company, particularly a startup building an automated kiosk or vending machine, they always list the same target markets. Those include airports, universities, hospitals, military bases, and basically any location where there are a lot of people coming through at all hours of the day. So my ears perked up when Alex Barseghian, Founder of RoboEatz, said his company was looking to set up its robot in the middle of nowhere.

Specifically, Barseghian mentioned setting up his company’s robot in a “remote mining facility” during the automation panel I moderated at our Restaurant Tech virtual summit yesterday. Barseghian didn’t provide specifics, but it’s not hard to imagine what a “remote mining facility” might look like, and why a robot might be useful there.

RoboEatz makes a 200 sq ft. self-contained robotic kiosk that stores 110 ingredients and uses an articulating arm to assemble a variety of both hot and cold meals. Aside from someone to re-stock ingredients and handle the occasional maintenance, the machine does everything on its own.

This autonomy, and the robot’s ability to make a meal every 30 seconds, makes it perfect for high-traffic places like airports. Busy people on the go can get a hot, restaurant-quality meal served up any time of day or night. But the autonomy also makes it perfect for places where there aren’t a lot of people and not a lot of access. Rather than sending a cook and setting up a kitchen in a remote area, which can be expensive, a robot can take care of that work. Just set the kiosk up once and regularly top off the ingredients, the robot will take care of the rest.

No only do meal-making robots like those RoboEatz and Karakuri and YPC Technologies operate independently, they can serve food across day parts (yogurt in the morning, pasta at night) and around the clock, so they can feed people working odd hour shifts. Additionally, robots can offer a variety of menu options, rather than a cook making one meal for everyone at a facility. People in the remote situation could order the meal they want and get it in minutes.

The broader point to consider is that while remote areas may not be as top of mind or even immediately as lucrative as other high-traffic locales, food robots installed in these locations could have a much bigger impact for the people who live there.

Q&A: RoboEatz on the Importance of Robotics in Restaurants of the Future

Thanks in part to the pandemic and the changing restaurant experience, there is more interest in food robots these days. While we’re not yet at the point where counters, kitchens, and drive-thrus are fully manned by these bots, there is a steadily growing number of choices when it comes to machines that can speed up and/or smooth out operations, save on costs, and provide a truly contactless meal creation and pickup experience.

One such offering is the RoboEatz Ark 03. it is a standalone kiosk that contains an articulating arm, fresh ingredients (including soups and salad dressings), an induction cooker and cubbies to hold pickup orders. When a customer places an order (via phone or tablet), the robot arm grabs ingredients, places them in the rotating induction cooker, and puts the finished meal container in a cubby.

RoboEatz’ CEO Alex Barseghian will share more on this exciting new world of restaurant tech at The Spoon’s upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit on August 17. As a teaser, we recently got some thoughts from him about restaurant robotics, which you can read below. And if you haven’t already, grab a ticket to the virtual show here.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity.

1. What problem does Roboeatz solve for restaurants/the restaurant industry?

The robot solves multiple things in one system. The ARK 03 can hold 80 ingredients allowing for 1,000 menu items to be made. Anyone from a salad concept to a pasta bar QSR or an Asian restaurant chain can leverage it. It self cleans the entire system and utensils, can dish out meals every 20 seconds and can serve 1,000 meals before it needs replenishment. It reduces waste, makes more consistent and great tasting food and labour shortages are resolved.

2. What is the biggest change in terms of the restaurant industry’s approach towards technology as a result of the pandemic?

There are a number. Touchless interaction is becoming more vital. Everything from digital menu boards, touchless payments and curbside pick have increased in demand during the pandemic. Chains are going to look to automate key areas of the kitchen or replace the whole kitchen to reduce mundane tasks. There is global labour shortage for the restaurant industry and technology is going to be a vital way to solve for that problem. 

3. Where do robotics and automation make the most sense in the restaurant industry (e.g., back of house, standalone machines, etc.)?

They can be either back of house or full standalone systems. The application will depend on the environment. For example, business canteens, student campuses, mining camps, airports and transit hubs can drop in a standalone machine like the ARK03. But if you have a casual fine dining chain with a massive infrastructure, you will take much more of an iterative approach to technology. Test and learn which pain points need to be fixed and automated. Only after can you scale — which takes time and extensive resources.

4. What is the biggest challenge for restaurants right now when it comes to digitization? 

The whole continuum of the journey is a challenge because there are so many aspects to digitization. From the ease of consumer ordering and personalization on the mobile phone to the end point of picking something in store, systems interacting with each other is a very large pain point.  

5. What are you most excited about when it comes to the impact of restaurant technology?

That we, as a society, can rely on is great quality food that is produced safely and without much food waste. We have a profitable model that is scalable for multiple restaurant verticals, from QSRs to managed food service companies with the aforementioned goal in mind.

6. What do you think the restaurant industry will look like in five years?

The fine dining restaurants will deploy automation that is not visible to customers.  Managed food service companies will deploy full systems in multiple verticals they service, especially where grab and go or 24/7 food is needed. QSR chains will have either a full system or have hybrid back of house functions. It is a very exciting time.  

RoboEatz Shows Off Ark 03 Autonomous Robotic Meal Making Kiosk

It’s pretty remarkable to think of how much food robots have evolved over the three years I’ve been covering them. At the start of that time period, we had Flippy the robotic arm that could grill up burgers, and even that required human help. Fast forward to 2021, and RoboEatz is showing off its fully autonomous robotic meal-preparation system that can put together 1,000 meals on its own before a human is needed to refill its ingredients.

RoboEatz Ark 03 is a 200 sq. ft. standalone kiosk featuring an articulating arm, 110 fresh ingredients (30 of which are liquids like soups and salad dressings), an induction cooker and a number of cubbies that hold orders for pickup. After an order is placed (via mobile app or tablet), the robot arm grabs ingredients, places them in the rotating induction cooker, and puts the finished meal container in a cubby. You can see it in action in this video:

RoboEatz creates both cold and hot food, can produce a meal every 30 seconds, cleans and sanitizes itself, and only needs a human for refilling any ingredients that run out. Food can also be customized to meet certain taste and dietary preferences.

You won’t be seeing RoboEatz-branded robo restaurants, as the company plans to license out its technology to third-party restaurants. As I’ve said before, this type of co-branding makes a lot of sense for food robot companies. Hungry consumers won’t know what a “RoboEatz” restaurant would serve, but they would know what to expect from a robot kiosk with “Olive Garden” branding (or whatever, I’m just naming a random.

There is more interest in food robots now, thanks to the global pandemic. A fully robotic kitchen/restaurant means a truly contactless meal creation and pickup experience.

But food robots have the potential to help with the operational costs of running a foodservice operation. There’s the aforementioned savings from not employing a human (a bigger, ethical and societal issues to be sure), but robots can also dispense ingredients with precision and consistency, reducing ingredient waste. Robots can also keep ingredients out of the open keeping them away from outside germs and preventing cross-contamination. Plus, they can run 24 hours a day without a break, eliminating any downtime.

All of the above is why we’re seeing so many fully autonomous robot restaurants coming to market right now. Karakuri, YPC and Highpper all have various versions of fully autonomous robot restaurant kiosks in the works.

All of those companies are also eyeing the same high-traffic locales when placing their robo-restaurants: hospitals, transportation hubs, schools, etc. RoboEatz says it will be opening its first location “soon” in Latvia (where the company is headquartered), with another location at an undisclosed airport opening as well as a prototype store in the U.S. later this year.